February 24, 2010 – Port-au-Prince, Haiti…[Libna Stevens/IAD]
Although visibly shaken, Tisnore Elironne Bijou agrees to tell her story. So does her friend Marie Mirlande Charles, who is sitting next to her. Bijou and Charles were among 26 women attending choir practice on the afternoon of Tuesday, Jan. 12, when the earthquake shook the three-story building adjacent to Adventist Temple No. 1 in Port-au-Prince.
“I remember the choir director wrote on the board ‘what is music?'” says Bijou. “I got up to go to the restroom, when-” she stops as tears well up in her eyes. She remembers feeling the strong trembling on the third floor where the class was meeting. “I fell and rolled down the stairs and when I got to the last step I could barely breathe. Everything was covered in white dust.”
During those intense seconds, Bijou, 20, remembers hearing people saying “Jesus save me.” She saw a man come near her. He hugged her and they both cried out for help.
Charles, age 26, remembers that she came earlier than the other women to organize the room. This was not a regular practice but a music reading lesson, she said. As the director was taking attendance, she noticed there were about 30 women there but three left the class briefly before the earthquake.
“I heard a strong shaking like birds were flapping their wings and I saw the ceiling start to fall,” says Charles. She was near the door and tried to run. “It felt so magnetic. I was pulled down the stairs as the whole building started to shake.”
As she made her way outdoors, Charles saw other church members and noticed the rubble on the third floor where she had been. It looked as if the building was only two stories high.
Only four members of the women’s choir and its director, Marilien Alexadre Ismael, made it out alive. The other 22 perished in the rubble.
Although they don’t bear visible scars, they still carry the experience in their minds.
“I feel closer to God,” says Bijou, who hopes to resume her nursing studies when schools reopen. “God is sustaining my life day by day.”
Charles, too, feels closer to God.
“God has been good to me,” she says. “Without Him I know I could not have survived.” Charles has a nursing degree and was in her second year studying accounting.
Charles, who also sings with the men’s choir, says it’s easy to share her story with others because they experienced the same and understand.
Ismael feels thankful to be alive but is still affected by the loss of his choir members.
“I have a lot of suffering about that,” he says. A choir director for nearly 40 years at the Adventist Temple No. 1, Ismael says he will continue his music ministry.
“By the music and words people hear in church, they can find Jesus and His healing power,” he explains.
Healing is what the church leaders of Adventist Temple No. 1 are hoping will take place for its 3,000 members.
“We know of 61 members who have died from the earthquake, and more than 85 percent of our surviving members are living on the streets,” says Maxo Rousseau, a church elder. “We have visited them and share our love. We try to give them food with money we collect, and we just try to survive with the little that we have right now,” says Rousseau.
The temple itself resumed worship services just one month after the quake hit. The building’s concrete floor was repaired. Blue tarps, hanging from the iron frame above, form the roof.
“We are planning to hold evangelistic campaigns next month,” says Rosseau. “Our church building was destroyed but the church is still alive.”
To help Adventist Churches and church members in Haiti, donate to Inter-America’s Haiti Catastrophe Fund at https://recursing-golick.147-182-135-0.plesk.page/users/index.php?type=news&id=1435&language=en
To view photos of Adventist Temple No. 1, click here.
